Who gets to produce electricity is galvanizing the
West

Plans are on the drawing table
for another wave of coal-fired power plants across the West. But
unlike 25 to 30 years ago, during the last binge in building power
plants, this time there is opposition from a critical source --
local ratepayers.

This opposition should not be
over-stated. In most areas, the electrical co-ops that provide
power for most of the rural West are dutifully hitching their
wagons to coal for another half-century. Coal is cheap, coal is
reliable, while wind, solar and other alternative energies are more
intermittent and more expensive, at least given today’s
prices.

But driven primarily by global warming, two
electrical co-ops, one in New Mexico, the other in western
Colorado, have rejected contracts that build in new coal-fired
plants. In the short run, this decision looks risky. Coal is
proven, and we have lots of it. However, it may become a lot more
expensive if -- as many people expect -- the federal government
imposes a carbon tax after the next presidential election.

Another rebellion was in the Sierra Nevada, between Reno
and Sacramento. There, with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
looking over their shoulder, directors of the Truckee Donner
Utility Board rejected a 50-year contract for electricity from a
power plant planned in Utah. More important, people came out of the
woodwork to testify in a case that gripped the community for weeks.
People who six months before had no idea where their electricity
came from trooped up to microphones. This was the global warming
debate at the grassroots level.

Dozens of rural
electrical co-ops in several Rocky Mountain states have also been
debating the future of coal. Last year, the Denver-based Tri-State
Generation and Transmission power provider announced plans for
three coal-fired plants. Most of the 44 member co-ops in a
four-state area, particularly those in the agriculture-based areas,
quickly agreed to contract extensions to the year 2050. But debate
continued for months at other co-ops, and during that period, two
of those plants mysteriously vanished from Tri-State’s plans.

In the end, two co-ops refused to sign the extended
contract with Tri-State. One was New Mexico’s Kit Carson
Electric. Based in Taos, it has pockets of wealth in a three-county
area but plenty of barely-making-it folks. Luis Reyes, the chief
executive officer, describes a future powered by coal as a shaky
business decision.

The contract with Tri-State has too
many unfilled blanks about financing, he says, and more broadly,
the plans assume that coal will remain cheap. He and his board of
directors doubt it. They expect a fight in Washington soon about a
carbon tax, and eventually, he says, “There will be a tax
imposed on conventional coal-fired power plants.” That makes
coal a risky proposition for people who count their pennies.

But there’s another issue here, that of local
economic development. When the rural co-ops were created in the
1930s, they bought from investor-owned utilities. Then, after World
War II, they formed generation and transmission co-operatives,
which built power plants that the retail co-ops supposedly owned
and that supplied them with power.

The wisdom of that
consolidation is being attacked as rural co-ops have begun to say
that they want more latitude for creating their own electricity, be
it from wind, solar or biomass. At present, Tri-State’s 44
member co-ops can generate no more than 5 percent of the power from
local renewable sources. At Kit Carson, Reyes is betting these
alternative technologies will catch up and give non-resort rural
communities a chance to prosper. While the cities and resorts of
the West are booming, he notes, not all rural areas are.

In western Colorado, this same strategy of economic diversification
was wrapped in red, white and blue at the annual meeting of
Delta-Montrose Electric, the only other co-op that refused to
extend Tri-State’s contract. Unlike most places that talk
loudly about global warming, this area did not vote for John Kerry
in 2004. Instead, local voters gave the Bush-Cheney ticket a
plurality of 67 percent of their votes.

Yet this co-op is
redefining what is responsible and wise. It’s aiming for many
small answers to keep more money at home: hydro-electric on local
farms, the piles of sawdust at a local sawmill, small solar
collectors. Ironically, the district includes underground mines
that produce 1.5 percent of the country’s coal.

At
the nearby resort town of Telluride, the annual meeting of the San
Miguel Power Association yielded high drama as more than 50
residents took over the meeting to demand more locally sourced
electricity. But amid the theater, there was also substance. One of
the speakers at Telluride, Pamela Lifton-Zoline, said many of the
rural co-ops haven’t yet figured out that global warming has
redefined their mission of providing cheap power. “They need
to provide responsible power, and they haven’t recalculated
that yet.”

If you listen closely,
that’s what you hear out in the rural and oh-so-conservative
burgs of the West: impatience with the old ways of thinking about
electricity.

More from Energy & Industry

Great article. It is in decisions such as
the electric cooperatives are grappling with -- how to local source
power that is affordable and sustainable now and into the future --
that will determine the fate of the rural West. There is far too
little reporting on these wonkish, yet vital issues.
Thanks.